One of the things that are making mothers concerned is someone having a bad influence on their child. That is completely normal because every mother has the instinct to protect their child from any harm and evil. So, when they see that their kid is badly influenced by another kid or someone else they tend to get overprotective.

Don’t Be Overprotective

Being overprotective of your kid is usually not the best option you have to protect him/her from bad influencing people. Unfortunately, there are these kinds of mothers out there who don’t know any other way to protect their children but to completely cut them off from their friends and people around them. Those mothers create some kind of a protective bubble around their kids, and they don’t let anyone inside that bubble. This can be extremally bad for the child because it can create some level of loneliness and your kid can get depressed or angry at you, even if your intentions were only to protect them from harm. They don’t understand that especially if they are teenagers because that is the period of their lives when their hormones are starting to influence their decisions.

Talk to Them

Instead of forbidding your kid to hang out with friends that might have a bad influence on them, you as their mother should try to talk with them about that group of friends. That conversation should be very open, your kid should be comfortable enough to tell you everything about his friends. If you see that your kid is holding something back, tell him that he needs to trust you and that you will only give him advice. When your kid tells you all about that group of friends that he likes, advise him on what should he be avoiding. You are the adult; therefore, you most likely have enough experience to tell him what kind of behavior is bad.

Levels of Threat

When it comes to bad influence there are certain levels that can be set, depending on the situation. We like to think that there are 3 levels of threat and that you should react differently to each of them. You should never ignore even the lowest level of threat because that can lead up to a higher level and then it will be too late to take initiative.

The first Level. This level of threat is so small that usually, parents don’t even recognize it as a threat to their children. Here is an example, your kid is very smart, all his grades are perfect. He starts to hang out with friends that prevent him from studying by playing video games all day long.

Second Level. This is a more serious threat than playing video games all day, it can be things like smoking cigarettes and drinking beer.

Third Level. There is no chance that you won’t realize this threat, what is more, serious than smoking and drinking as a kid? Well using drugs. You should take immediate action and make a stop to it.